


Changing Rooms

by tilda



Category: Tennis RPS
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tilda/pseuds/tilda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Give me a different dish every day, different restaurant, I have no problem. Or even a different bed.' Set directly after the Wimbledon 2008 final.</p><p><span class="small">Written 07/08</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Changing Rooms

_Monday 7th July, 1am._

He is half-watching the highlights from Silverstone in his new hotel room and feeling blurred around the edges from the wine at dinner and from the beer he is half-drinking now. He won't be able to stay awake much longer. He lets his eyes get heavy.

He can still feel Rafa pressed into his side at the net. He'd been practically holding Rafa up, talking quietly to him, saying he didn't know what. Some rubbish. He always babbled a little after their matches, to bring Rafa down. He could feel how wired Rafa was, despite his tiredness. It was the energy of a spent firework, the last few flares before darkness. He hopes Rafa is okay. He lets his eyelids sink a little lower. The sound of the TV motor-racing gets further away.

It could only have been Rafa. Over the past year he has watched Rafa, watched him become what he has become now, and recognises that change. He remembers it. He knows what it's like to watch champions die across the net from you, and to know that it's your time now.

Over the past year too, he has felt himself slowly give in, and Paris was the beginning of the end. A small part of him had known then that Wimbledon might be lost. By the time he'd hit that final shot, he'd known – his whole body had known – that the ball wasn't going to make it over the net.

He slips further down on the sofa.

There is a soft knock at the door, but it may as well be a gun-shot. He jerks fully awake and sits up, running his hands through his hair before getting up to answer it.

Rafa is standing there, one hand against the door-jamb. He is glaring at Roger.

'Why you do this?' he asks irritably. 'This change hotels all time?'

He looks so annoyed that Roger has to laugh. He reaches out to grasp the back of Rafa's neck and pull him inside the room.

'Oh, you know what the British press are like,' he murmurs, kicking the door shut and drawing him into a hug. Rafa hugs him back fiercely.

'No is funny. What if I no find you?'

Roger smoothes Rafa's hair away from his face. He is pouting and there is a savage line between his eyebrows. 'You always find me,' Roger says, smiling softly. Rafa's gaze is searching, and Roger turns away, taking Rafa's hand and leading him to the sofa. Rafa follows him, but doesn't sit.

'You no like I always find you. You want I should leave you alone?'

Roger looks up at him from where he is sitting. _Sometimes, yes, Rafa. Sometimes you're too much for me._ He tugs on Rafa's hand and doesn't say anything. Rafa looks as if this is an unsatisfactory response but sits on the edge of the sofa and starts fiddling with the remote. He looks at Roger.

'I was worry. I just want see you are okay.'

Roger ruffles the back of his head. 'You can always call,' he says.

Rafa huffs a little impatiently. 'Is not enough. I must see you.' He looks away and gnaws at the corner of his lip. 'But is okay. I see you now. You are okay. I go.' He gets up, leaving Roger's hand holding thin air. Roger watches him walk towards the door and lets his hand drop back to the sofa, feeling the warmth of where Rafa had been sitting.

He wishes sometimes he could lose this habit of distance, because he knows suddenly that he does not want to be wide awake and alone in a strange hotel-room, and he knows too that Rafa is the only person on earth he can be with right now.

Rafa is already at the door and reaching for the handle because when Rafa says 'I go', it's not some game to get Roger to follow him, it's because he really is going. Even tennis is not a game to him. If Roger doesn't want to make an idiot of himself running down a hotel corridor in track-pants and bare feet after the most famous Spaniard in the world, he's going to have to move fast. In a few short strides he's reaching for Rafa's sleeve, which is the nearest bit of him he can lay his hands on, and he's saying 'No.'

And when Rafa turns around, Roger understands the shock on his face because this is more than he's ever done before. He's never stopped Rafa from leaving, he's never said when he wants. He's always kept it light, cool. Standing there, hanging on to Rafa's sleeve, both of them frozen and staring at each other, Roger is a little afraid. But Rafa just pushes the door closed, reaches out to draw Roger to him, and kisses him, hard, mercilessly, not letting him come up for air, and Roger has to kiss back or die.

They fall on the bed and wrap themselves up in each other like two hands clasping. And it's easy and familiar, but different from the other times too. It's difficult to get undressed because neither wants to let the other go, but they manage it, and Roger closes his eyes and feels and forgets. This is the quiet, secret counterpart to being on court together that he's always needed almost as much as he needs to hold a racket every day. And he needs it now most of all because to feel Rafa's body against his is to be reminded constantly of all the power he has to overcome.

When he said he'd be back, he meant it. He's overheard a lot of talk this evening – quiet, people keeping their voices low – of the end of an era. They don't realise that it's the beginning of a new one too.


End file.
